A renowned educator-psychologist explains how children learn and how family, classroom, and school practices can help them learn more effectively. In addition to drawing on studies of learning outcomes, the author reveals economic research on teacher education and school choice that challenges many popular assumptions.

Combine this research-based, collaborative framework with four critical dimensions of leadership to advance equity and excellence in student learning and close student achievement gaps in your school.

"With the spotlight on schools and the achievement of subgroups of students, educators need to read this book and reflect on the guiding questions. Then we need to take the challenge and do what we know is right so we are doubling student performance and closing achievement gaps." —Leslie Standerfer, Principal Estrella Foothills High School, Goodyear, AZ "This text is the product of considerable research and disciplined reflection on closing the student achievement gap in schools, unquestionably the most important challenge facing schools. The book offers a wealth of well-illustrated advice about how to address this challenge and should be required reading for every principal and superintendent." —Kenneth Leithwood, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto The keys to closing achievement gaps from principals who have been there! What does it take to reach across cultural and socioeconomic barriers to bridge student achievement gaps? Drawing on five years of nationwide research, the authors present Learning First, an integrated schoolwide framework of collaborative leadership that helps school leaders advance learning for all students. Using case examples that illustrate how Learning First works in action and providing worksheets, checklists, and rubrics to support implementation, the book shows principals how to apply this field-tested model to four critical dimensions of leadership: Advancing equity and excellence in student learning Developing teachers′ instructional capacity Managing and aligning resources Building and engaging community Learning First! offers an approach that strengthens principals′ leadership skills, delineates shared goals for professional communities, and helps educators keep their eyes on the prize—closing the achievement gap in their schools.

This book is about student success and how to support and improve it. It takes as its point of departure that we--as faculty, assessment directors, student affairs professionals, and staff--reflect together in a purposeful and informed way about how our teaching, curricula, the co-curriculum, and assessment work in concert to support and improve student learning and success. It also requires that we do so in collaboration with our colleagues and our students for the rich insights that we gain from them.Conversational in style, this book offers a wide variety of illustrations of how your peers are putting assessment into practice in ways that are meaningful to them and their institutions, and that lead to improved student learning. The authors provide rich guidance for activities ranging from everyday classroom teaching and assessment to using assessment to improve programs and entire institutions.The authors envisage individual faculty at four-year institutions and community colleges as their main audience, whether those faculty are focused on their own classes or support their colleagues through leadership roles in assessment. If you plan to remain focused on your own courses and students, you will find that those sections of this book will help you better understand why and how assessment leaders do what they do, which in turn will make your participation in assessment more engaging and increase your expertise in facilitating student learning. Because the authors also aim to strengthen connections between the curriculum and co-curriculum and include examples of co-curricular assessment, student affairs professionals and staff interested in doing the same will also find ideas in this book relevant to their work.Opening with a chapter on equity in assessment practice, so critical to learning from and benefitting our diverse students, the authors guide you through the development and use of learning outcomes, the design of assignments with attention to clear prompts and rubrics, and the achievement of alignment and coherence in pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment to better support student engagement, achievement and success. The chapter on using student evidence for improvement offers support, resources, and recommendations for doing so, and demonstrates exciting uses of student wisdom.The book concludes by emphasizing the importance of reflection in assessment practices--offering powerful examples and strategies for professional development--and by describing appropriate, creative, and effective approaches for communicating assessment information with attention to purpose and audience.

Mindframes-your internal set of beliefs about your role as school leader-determine the high-impact leadership practices you choose to implement. In other words, how you think about the impact of the actions you take has more effect on student achievement than your leadership practices themselves. Building on over twenty-five years of Visible Learning® research and girded by a theory of action that ensures school leaders have the expertise to select, implement, and evaluate high-impact interventions, 10 Mindframes for Leaders: The Visible Learning® Approach to School Success brings the mindframes of world-renowned educators to life. Ten chapters, each written by different thought leaders, detail a mindframe at the heart of successful school leadership, along with the high-probability influences that make each mindframe visible. A must-have resource for any educator working toward student achievement at ever-higher levels, each chapter includes, The most current findings from the Visible Learning research, including the factors from Visible Learning that support each mindframe, Practical ideas for leaders to implement high-impact strategies in classrooms and schools, Vignettes, questions, insights, and exercises to help educators clarify and refine their own mindframes, Lead your school to reform from the inside out. Cultivate these ways of thinking, and you're more likely to have major impacts on the learning lives of those students entrusted to your care. Book jacket.

How did a tough, "D" school in Brooklyn that was about to be closed down become an "A" school in less than 3 years? How did a large school district in the Midwest use data to drive effective school improvement that led 15 of their 88 schools to make AYP for the first time? How are entire nations like Finland ensuring smooth leadership transition and capacity to sustain student success? Five years, 200,000 readers and one national award after Failure is Not an Optionwas first published, Alan M. Blankstein has documented how educators have closed gaps, turned schools around, and sustained overall success. With contributions from Pedro A. Noguera, Andy Hargreaves, and Dean Fink, this book outlines the who, what, and how of becoming a high-performing school and learning community, shows how to avoid ten common routes to failure, provides double the resources, includes many new case stories and examples, and offers new emphasis on: diversity; assessment for learning; intervention and support for students at risk; and schooling as a community endeavor involving families. The second edition of Failure is Not an Optiontells more than the story, it gives all the specifics, the tools, the insights, and the processes that others have used to ensure that success is the ONLY option!

The International Guide to Student Achievement brings together and critically examines the major influences shaping student achievement today. There are many, often competing, claims about how to enhance student achievement, raising the questions of "What works?" and "What works best?" World-renowned bestselling authors, John Hattie and Eric M. Anderman have invited an international group of scholars to write brief, empirically-supported articles that examine predictors of academic achievement across a variety of topics and domains. Rather than telling people what to do in their schools and classrooms, this guide simply provides the first-ever compendium of research that summarizes what is known about the major influences shaping students’ academic achievement around the world. Readers can apply this knowledge base to their own school and classroom settings. The 150+ entries serve as intellectual building blocks to creatively mix into new or existing educational arrangements and aim for quick, easy reference. Chapter authors follow a common format that allows readers to more seamlessly compare and contrast information across entries, guiding readers to apply this knowledge to their own classrooms, their curriculums and teaching strategies, and their teacher training programs.

School Improvement that lasts: find out how with this masterful guide! Common Core requirements, merit-based pay, new teacher evaluations, project-based learning-21st century learning is a demanding and rapidly changing landscape. Advance from overwhelmed to empowered with the third edition of Alan M. Blankstein's Failure Is Not an Option®, used by more than 350,000 educators to create schools that sustain success for every student. New case studies and field-tested techniques uncover indispensable insights into successful school change. Develop high-performing leadership teams through Powerful engagement strategies and capacity-building questions to help staff and students leverage what's working and target measurable goals, New real-world examples to help stakeholders maintain collaborative cultures in the face of new teacher evaluations and merit pay, sustain successful RTI and Common Core initiatives, thrive in diverse settings, and promote community engagement, New tools, forms, and video segments on a companion website Use this handbook to discover what makes results-oriental, enduring school improvement models work! Book jacket.